When George Price died in January 1975, his funeral in London was attended by five homeless men. Alongside them were Bill Hamilton and John Maynard Smith, two distinguished British evolutionary biologists. All seven men had come to mourn an eccentric American genius who helped to unpick the riddle of how altruism, or unselfish concern for the welfare of others, could exist in a world driven by survival of the fittest—and who committed suicide at the age of 52. In science historian and sociologist Oren Harman's investigation, Price's personal and professional journey is intricately woven into a sweeping arc of modern politics and science that takes us from Darwin's Beagle to the court of the Russian Tsar, from Marxist manifestos to Nazi heresies, and from the trenches of World War I to the protests of Vietnam.

"Enthralling ... extremely well researched and written with great love of the subject, The Price of Altruism reveals all sorts of personal details of momentous events in the history of science.... This is a book for anyone interested in the question, first posed by Darwin himself, of how we ended up with so much kindness in a natural world customarily depicted as 'red in tooth and claw.' [George] Price struggled with it on an intensely personal level. His story is highly relevant at a time when greed as the basis of society has lost much of its appeal."—NYTBR